On the eve of the big impeachment vote in the Senate, in which President Trump was ultimately acquitted on both of the Democrats’ articles, Trump invited some of the nation’s top television news anchors to the White House for lunch, and, according to the Daily Beast, “ate them alive.”
“Donald Trump served various television news personalities a lunch described by one White House guest as soup and filet of sole Tuesday — but soon the assembled anchorpeople were eating out of his hand,” Daily Beast Editor-at-Large Lloyd Grove reported Tuesday.
Among the big names invited to the presidential luncheon were some of the news media’s most high-profile figures, including “NBC’s Lester Holt and Chuck Todd, ABC’s David Muir and George Stephanopoulos, and CBS’s Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan,” Grove notes.
A notable omission was anyone at all from CNN, the network Trump has made painfully clear in the past is his least favorite. But if the folks over at CNN were hoping that any of their peers would speak up on their behalf, Grove says that they’ll be gravely disappointed — because “nobody at the long table” even “bothered to ask” why Trump had made sure to exclude them.
Also missing at the lunch was anyone from MSNBC, a network the president made a point of jabbing, as Grove reports:
“MSDNC isn’t here as well,” Trump quipped — to polite chuckles but zero protests (not even by Meet the Press and MSNBC anchor Todd) from his captive audience, who were there ostensibly for a briefing on tonight’s State of the Union address but instead were treated to a lot of presidential boasting about his poll numbers and the “through-the-roof” stock market, and a lot of gloating about the “fiasco” of Iowa’s Democratic caucuses and the general disarray in the out-of-power party.
So how did the event go? Well, Trump found the usually highly critical media personalities strangely subdued. The president, meanwhile, was not the ranting and raving autocrat left-leaning outlets would have the American public believe. As one guest told Grove, Trump was “chill” and notably “confident” ahead of the State of the Union speech and the big Senate vote.
“He wasn’t angry at all,” the source said. “He was friendly, outgoing, and relaxed. He was confident that he’ll be re-elected.”
The “chill” Trump answered questions — apparently none of them as confrontational and biased as the reporting on him generally is — and by the end, Grove writes, “a good time was had by all.” (Read Grove’s full report here.)
As for the State of the Union, Trump’s speech did indeed exude the “confidence” noted by those at the lunch earlier that day. One of the reasons for that confidence, no doubt, was Trump’s certainty that he was on the verge of being acquitted by the Republican-majority Senate.
On Wednesday, amid a flood of reports on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ripping up Trump’s speech Tuesday night for all the world to see, the Senate held the vote on the two articles of impeachment, passed by the Democrats in the House without a single Republican vote. The first article, “Abuse of Power,” ended up managing to pull one lone Republican vote, from frequent Trump-critic Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, but went down in flames 52-48. The second article, “Obstruction of Congress,” failed to get even Romney to buy in, failing 53-47. And with that, the “forever”-impeached president was likewise “forever” acquitted, as Trump has made sure to point out to his political enemies.
Related: Trump Trolls Democrats With Video Following Impeachment